Dismember is a basic Strength ability. When activated the player inflicts a bleed upon their opponent, doing 5 equal hits, dealing total of up to 188% weapon damage over 6 seconds. The minimum (total) hit of this ability is 100% weapon damage. Each individual hit is rounded down.

Like most other damage-over-time abilities, the damage of this ability is not increased by:

damage-boosting prayers/curses,

additional damage applied by having boosted levels (i.e. from potions - note that this is a separate damage increase to the base damage increase from having a higher level),

This may make it less desirable in some situations, but due to its higher-than-normal minimum hit, it is still one of the higher-damage abilities on average. However, Dismember also has an abnormally high chance of hitting its minimum damage, which makes its average ability damage 120.6% (compare to Sever or Decimate, which both have an average ability damage of 112.8% and are affected by the above boosts).

The Lunging perk increases the maximum damage of this ability by 20% per rank. At the maximum rank of 3, this brings Dismember's average ability damage up to 144.16%.
The Strength cape's perk extends Dismember by 3 hits to a total of 8, bringing Dismember's average ability damage up to 192.95%.

The perks stack with each other, resulting in an average ability damage of 230.66%.